In a win for liberty, Supreme Court blocks Biden’s vaccine mandate for big employers
Six days after hearing arguments, the Supreme Court released its ruling and blocked President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate for large employers, which would have affected nearly 80 million workers.
The justices did allow a separate vaccine mandate for healthcare workers at federally funded facilities to continue.
In the majority opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote: “The central question we face today is: Who decides? No one doubts that the COVID–19 pandemic has posed challenges for every American. Or that our state, local, and national governments all have roles to play in combating the disease. The only question is whether an administrative agency in Washington, one charged with overseeing workplace safety, may mandate the vaccination or regular testing of 84 million people. Or whether, as 27 states before us submit, that work belongs to state and local governments across the country and the people’s elected representatives in Congress.
“This court is not a public health authority. But it is charged with resolving disputes about which authorities possess the power to make the laws that govern us under the Constitution and the laws of the land.”
Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor dissented, as expected.
The decision reflects a win for federalism of course, but just as much, if not more so, for liberty and individual choice. The justices did not stray from the central controversial point of the debate: Who governs whom and how? The concurring Justices ended their opinion with this incredible statement:
“In saying this much, we do not impugn the intentions behind the agency’s mandate. Instead, we only discharge our duty to enforce the law’s demands when it comes to the question who may govern the lives of 84 million Americans,” the majority wrote. “Respecting those demands may be trying in times of stress. But if this Court were to abide them only in more tranquil conditions, declarations of emergencies would never end and the liberties our Constitution’s separation of powers seeks to preserve would amount to little.”
The cases tested the limits of executive power amid a relentless pandemic.
The challengers were various religious organizations, private businesses and Republican-led states, which argued Biden has no authority to mandate a vaccine for them.
After hearing the first challenge, which was a private business arguing against Biden’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration vaccine-or-test mandate, the Supreme Court ultimately seemed a bit wary of the mandates. The justices appeared particularly skeptical about whether Biden, along with OSHA, had the authority to impose such a mandate.
Chief Justice John Roberts regularly questioned OSHA’s jurisdiction, timing and authority. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, defending the mandate, made several claims that were false or at least exaggerated. She said that COVID-19 deaths were at an all-time high and that 100,000 children are hospitalized with the disease. Data supporting these statements is slim, if not nonexistent.
Gorsuch recognized the heart of the issue, which was not the effectiveness of the vaccine but who can require a mandate.
“Congress has had a year to act on the question of vaccine mandates,” he said. “Now, the federal government is going agency-to-agency as a workaround to its inability to get Congress to act.”
In the second case, in which Republican-led states argued on behalf of health care workers at facilities that receive federal funding against Biden’s vaccine mandate, the justices and attorneys also spent much of their time arguing about who had authority to implement a vaccine: states or the federal executive branch.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh raised an interesting point that would support Biden’s mandate, noting that healthcare providers were not “complaining” about the mandate as much as the justices would have assumed. The outcome of this case does not seem as clear as the first.
While Texas did not specifically join one of these challenges, Attorney General Ken Paxton had repeatedly sued Secretary Xavier Becerra at the Department of Health and Human Services over the mandate already. On Dec. 15, federal court Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk, a Donald Trump appointee, granted a preliminary injunction, temporarily halting Biden’s vaccine mandate for healthcare workers. The Department of Justice cited that ruling in its application for stay to the Supreme Court in the Biden v. Missouri case.
“This is a win for liberty. The federal government does not have the ability to make health decisions for hard-working Americans,” Paxton said after the federal court granted an injunction. “These unconstitutional mandates have no place in our country, and they are not welcomed here in Texas.”
While Paxton’s not a flawless attorney general, he’s made a strong case that the president citing executive privilege — even in a pandemic — should not be able to require mandate vaccines for Texans or demand Texas business owners do so or fire their employees.
Americans, Texans, still have rights, and no governor or president should have the unfettered ability to quell them, even in a global health crisis.
As of Jan. 4, more than 61 percent of Texas’ population ages five years and older is vaccinated, without federal mandates, just open communication, suggestions and old-fashioned common sense.
Texas ranks 26th in COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 people, yet it was one of the earliest states to reopen businesses and schools and adopted a statewide mask mandate for just a few weeks.
Texas is not perfect in its COVID response, , but one of its many gems is its commitment to freedom, its belief that people are and should remain inherently free to operate their businesses, attend school, and heck, even order alcohol to your door.
Supreme Court justices have hinted so far that they are no fans of executive overreach, either, when originated by the state, if religion clashes with the pandemic. In Catholic Diocese v. Cuomo, a case about whether or not the state could shut down religious entities during the pandemic, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote, “Even if the Constitution has taken a holiday during this pandemic, it cannot become a sabbatical.”
There are no pandemic cynics on the Court, though; all nine justices have recently received their vaccinations and boosters. In the same case, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that “the COVID-19 pandemic remains extraordinarily serious and deadly” and that he doesn’t “doubt the State’s authority to impose tailored restrictions — even very strict restrictions — on attendance at religious services and secular gatherings alike.”
However, the Supreme Court has recently been receptive to targeted vaccine mandates when state and local officials required them, a recent challenge where they allowed shot requirements for New York healthcare workers. The Supreme Court has also repeatedly rejected religious objections to vaccine mandates.
They are expected to reach a decision quickly, and it could have widespread consequences for future executive decisions.
Regardless of the outcome, Texas has done the right thing in repeatedly bucking Biden mandates that demonstrate such a zealous overreach of power.
This story was originally published January 7, 2022 at 5:08 AM.
